YouTube and Paintball...?

[DocsMachine]

Has anyone ever run across any issues with showing paintball, or especially paintball guns, on YouTube? My latest video, showing making a reduced-scale Sniper body, got flagged, I appealed, and the flag was upheld and the video removed.

The violation was against their community standards involving manufacturing or modifying firearms- but nowhere in the six paragraphs or so, is there anything about airguns, paintball guns, airsoft, pellet guns, BB guns or just anything that "looks like a gun".

I have no visible avenue to appeal the final flag, so I plan to reedit the video, add a disclaimer, etc. and reupload.

But I know that Facebook, for one, basically considers anything vaguely gun-shaped and having a trigger, as verboten, and will flag/strike/remove it. Anyone run across anything like that in regards to paintball?

This may be a special case- Ian at Forgotten Weapons, for example, can show a gun being DISassembled, but not REassembled- that counts as "manufacturing or modifying" according to YT. Here, I may be the only one (that I know of) showing a marker being actually made, so that's a 'strike' whereas somebody actually playing paintball with one, isn't.

Anybody have, or know of similar issues?

Doc.

[OpusX]

Post videos to odysee and be free.

[AaronM]

^ This. I've never heard of odysee until now.

[Carp]

I still don't know what odysee is.

[RAZRBAKK]

Reflex0283 yes, but this is exactly why it exists and the more content is blocked from YouTube, the more popular it will become.

Many content creators that run into issues with YouTube's terms or service because of the type of content they make are already uploading to both simultaneously.

[DocsMachine]

Ditto InRange, Floatplane, and other video hosts. Even well-established Vimeo can't hold a candle to the traffic that YT gets.

I should be okay, with a little modification to the video. I mean, there's a ton of videos of people adding- and making- "moderators" (silencers) to pellet guns, so I should be able to make a dang body!

Doc.

[scottieb]

I do wish the paintball world would refer to them only as markers. This creates a helpful difference between paintball and real steel. It's why bb repeater/pistol/rifle is used and not "gun". We do not want paintball markers regulated in identical manners as actual firearms. Similar ways? Perhaps. But not identical. Had the paintball world adopted this decades ago and stuck to it, then I believe we wouldn't run into issues such as this.

Youtube, Facebook, etc also share some finger pointing in this. Their standards are unreasonable. And sometimes they blanket enforce them while other times the enforcement is selective.

It stinks that your video is less available to the world. It is done very well on technical merit and also receives high marks for entertain and its artistry.

[RAZRBAKK]

I just wish people would chill out. We call lots of things guns that aren't. Caulking applicator or electric nailer don't exactly roll off the tongue, and certainly aren't protecting anyone.

[scottieb]

I agree with you. However there is no overarcing entity coming down on those things, imposing their rules and limiting people.

[Ecapnation]

You're worried about verbal semantics, meanwhile the industry is cashing in on tte less than lethal market.

[Pumpytrilly1]

Unfortunately you'll have to keep certain stuff on rumble and just point your YouTube over to it

[Chuck E Ducky]

It’s odd that it was taken down.

What will we ever do if the they stop protecting us from ourselves. I think it’s so stupid that they have to edit out certain words so the algorithm don’t self delete you digitally. All while it can actively promote soft core porn and bum fights with zero age restrictions. It’s such a stupid hill to literally die on. 🤷🏻

[DocsMachine]

Unfortunately you'll have to keep certain stuff on rumble and just point your YouTube over to it

-I hope not. As I said, there's a ton of airgun/PCP stuff on YT, including mods and upgrades- as I said, even including making and printing "moderators". So I'm hoping what 'flagged' me was the ".50 caliber" and "Sniper" parts. I've left both of those out and added some emphasis on the "paintball" side of it, so we'll see how it goes.

Doc.

[nobbie333]

I liked the first two videos, and I'm very curious to see how the final one turns out. Also, if it is 68 cal, will it be for sale? I think they are showing you how to make an actual firearm and not a paintball gun

[TF_Aloha]

It might have been the use of the word "sniper" that really made them go nuts. There are plenty of paintball gear videos that show markers being disassembled and reassembled, even with Magfed markers that could deceive a blurry-eyed reviewer into thinking it was a firearm. If the video started with something like "building my sniper" that might just taint the whole video in the eyes of their automated processes. Once that idea is out there, it's hard for an AI or an over-tasked Indian in a sweatshop to not see this as a tutorial on how to build a "ghost gun."

Brad from the Paintball Ruined My Life channel once got a hit for having a black speedball marker on screen. He managed to fight it, but it seemed like it was really hard to get someone at YouTube to actually pay attention long enough to realize "this is obviously not related to firearms."

If you want to try to get that video to stay up there, you might want to try it again without the word "sniper" or "gun" (even "pump paintball GUN") and find a way to have a video of someone in a colorful paintball mask using a colorful paintball marker early in the video. Maybe even add a chyron to the bottom of the screen that says "ASSEMBLING THE PAINTBALL MARKER" so that any frame anyone reviews will have "paintball" shoved in their face.

[DocsMachine]

It was, as I noted above, almost certainly due to the words ".50 caliber", "sniper" and "making" in the description. I was "making a .50 caliber sniper"- whatever, and that was a (if you'll pardon the pun) trigger phrase.

I'd bet a paycheck no live person flagged it, and when I disputed, no live person reviewed it. AI spotted the phrase, that phrase was still there when AI checked it again for the dispute, that phrase wasn't allowed, ergo it got blocked.

For the reupload, I did add a "this is a paintball gun" disclaimer, and a couple captions, plus changed the initial pics to include paintballs, and left "50 caliber" and "sniper" off the description- again adding "paintball", and it's still up after two days:

Doc.

[LightArmsJXF]

Thanks for posting up about this. I'm paying close attention to how this goes with you because I've been hoping that I'll one day start doing paintball build vids on YT, something I've not seen much of on YT, but the rise in automated shenanigans over the last decade has really put a damper on such aspirations. Hopefully you'll be able to realise a 'fool proof formula' of sorts to keep the AI bans at bay that others, including myself, can use. Anyways, I'm enjoying this build so thanks for just being creative and insane enough to just go ahead and build this 3/4 scale marker. Good luck with the YT vids.

[Cunha]

Anything you really like on any of these platforms you should rip / download and save locally. You can't depend on its availability. It is available at the discretion of someone you will never be able to communicate with except for the one way communication you receive when you no longer have access to content you have become accustomed to accessing.

This also helps when history is rewritten.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Just got done reading about the moon landing in a time capsule book written less than a year after. It’s interesting comparing the narratives of today to the narratives of yesterday. Digital is so easy to alter.

[DocsMachine]

Thanks for posting up about this. I'm paying close attention to how this goes with you because I've been hoping that I'll one day start doing paintball build vids on YT[...]

-The biggest thing to keep in mind is that any decent video takes a LOT of time. However long a process is- milling a body, assembling a marker, etc.- triple or quadruple that to record the process. Having a helper, er, helps, but even the guys that have a crew will tell you if X usually takes an hour, plan on a minimum of three to get it done.

That's part of the reason you don't see much paintball-based tech on YT. Most airsmiths are part-timers that don't have a lot of time to spend on it, or full machine shops that, also don't have a lot of time.

Me? I don't have a lot of time either, but I do have some pretty severe brain damage.

That video I just linked? That's what, ten minutes? Maybe eight of actual machine work? That took most of two days to shoot, and the better part of a third to edit.

Doc.

[Cunha]

Yeah doc your videos are masterpieces and like all your work, a massive contribution to paintball as a whole. We are all here because of the brain damage we share...so thank you.